Ice Age: The Meltdown
:This article is about the movie. If you are looking for the video game, see Ice Age 2: The Meltdown (video game). Ice Age: The Meltdown (Also known as Ice Age 2: The Meltdown or just simply Ice Age 2) is the sequel to Ice Age. The movie was produced by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox on March 31, 2006. Synopsis The Ice Age is coming to an end as the globe heats up. But when Manny, Diego and Sid realize that their valley is going to flood, they must warn everyone and somehow find a escape route for survival. Manny is ready to start a family but no one has seen a mammoth in ages making him think he is the last mammoth alive. Until on the way, he meets a female mammoth called Ellie who thinks shes an opossum now making them think they are the last of their kind. Cretaceous and Maelstrom are thawed out of the ice and intended to devour the heroes. Plot In the opening scene, Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel climbs a glacier but accidentally opens a hole in it. The world of ice is slowly melting. The creatures of the Ice Age are all shown enjoying themselves on slides and pools made by the melting ice; among them the three protagonists of the first film: Manfred, Sid, and Diego. Sid opens a day camp, where none of the younger creatures take him seriously, nor do Manfred and Diego, which leaves Sid seeking a daring deed. Fast Tony, a local con artist is claiming that the earth will flood and that the bark and reeds which he sells are needed to stay alive. Manfred dismisses the idea, but is distracted when he sees that Sid will try to high dive from a giant waterfall; as Manfred goes with Diego to the top of the waterfall to save Sid from his act of daredevilry, they see that the pleasant weather caused the ice of the valley to melt, and it is kept from destroying the valley only by the glaciers, which have formed a dam. As the animals begin their journey, Sid sings three songs to tease Manny about Mammoths being "extinct". The Lone Gunslinger tells the animals that a giant tree can act as a boat and save them; all soon set out to find it. During the time that the masses of animals escape, a glacier which contains two sea reptiles from the Mesozoic era, Cretaceous and Maelstrom, breaks off. Manfred is teased about being the last mammoth alive, but meets Ellie, a female mammoth who believes she is an opossum and the sister of Crash and Eddie. Sid invites her to tag along with the group to escape the flood, and she brings her brothers. After a perilous ordeal with Cretaceous and Maelstrom, Sid finds out that Diego is afraid of water. They discover an area which Ellie recalls as the place where she was adopted. She finally realizes she is a mammoth but distances herself from Manny when he suggests "saving their species". Sid is kidnapped by a tribe of mini-sloths who believe Sid to be a god. Sid lights a fire for them, and believes that he has finally found respect, but they plan to sacrifice him to a volcano. Sid escapes. The next morning Sid tells them his experience but none are convinced. They find a field of hot geysers, which separate Manfred, Sid, and Diego from Ellie and her brothers. When the flood comes, Manfred saves Ellie from drowning as she is caught in some rocks, while Diego overcomes his fear of water to save Sid. Cretaceous and Maelstrom arrive, but due to Manfred's quick thinking, they are finished off by a rock which falls on them, likely killing them both. The other animals are at the mercy of the water currents. Meanwhile, Scrat climbs up the glacier and at the top sticks the acorn he has into the ice. This forms a crack in the glacier, which widens into a fissure, diverting the flood and saving the animals. Scrat is then washed away. In the final scene, a herd of mammoths shows up, but Manny and Ellie decide to remain together anyway, taking Sid, Diego, and the opossum brothers along. The epilogue shows Scrat having a near death experience after falling into the fissure. He enters a heaven full of acorns. Suddenly, he finds himself torn away. He unhappily wakes up, having been resuscitated by Sid and thus beating him up Cast Production Carlos Saldanha strove to make the characters eyes appear alive and not mechanical. “You want the facial expressions to work. I wanted it to be so that if you looked into their eyes, you would know what they were thinking.” in his own words. The characters, despite being from the last movie, were remodeled for the sequel.CGSociety - Carlos Saldanha, Director of Ice Age: The Meltdown Reception Critical reception | rev2 =Entertainment Weekly | rev2Score =B+ | rev3 = | rev3Score = | rev4 = | rev4Score = | rev5 = | rev5Score = | rev6 = | rev6Score = | rev7 = | rev7Score = | rev8 = | rev8Score = }} Ice Age: The Meltdown opened with mixed to average and positive reviews. Rotten Tomatoes gave the movie a "Rotten" with only 57% of reviews positive Ice Age: The Meltdown Rotten Tomatoes ranking and 58 on Metacritic, placing it at the high end of the site's "mixed or average reviews" category. Ice Age: The Meltdown Metacritic ranking Roger Ebert gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four."Roger Ebert review of Ice Age: The Meltdown" Box office The movie was a major success in the box office, grossing $651,564,512 worldwide.http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=iceage2.htm This marks it as the highest grossing animated movie in 2006 and the seventh highest grossing computer animated film, behind Shrek 2, Shrek the Third, Shrek Forever After, Finding Nemo, Toy Story 3 and the sequel, Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Awards and NominationsIce Age: The Meltdown (2006) - Awards Ice Age: The Meltdown received 13 nominations, including Annie Awards for Best Animated Effects, Best Character Design in an Animated Feature Production, Best Directing in an Animated Feature Production (Carlos Saldanha), Best Music in an Animated Feature Production (John Powell) and Best Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production. It was nominated for Kid's Choice Awards' Favorite Animated Movie and Favorite Voice from Animated Movie (Ellie - Queen Latifah) from which it won the later. Video Game A multi-platform game based on the movie was released by Vivendi Games on March 14th, 2006, 17 days before the movie. Soundtrack The scores were done by John Powell. He composed brand new theme music replacing the original ones. DVD Release The DVD was released in the U.S. in November 21, 2006. Trivia *many birds appear in this film: *gastornis *unknown birds(probably presbyornis) *vultures *little song birds *hawks *condors Goofs * An opossum average lifetime is from 2 to 4 years, considering Ellie and the opossum brothers were infants at the same, and that Ellie is now an adult, the opossums should have been long gone. ** Possums don't walk on two legs either. Obviously Crash and Eddie aren't exactly like opossums in real-life. * When Manny introduces Ellie to the Diego and Sid, he calls her by her name, however, she never told him her name, it is possible he heard it as it was said once but Ellie was whispering to her "brothers" and Manny wouldn't have been able to hear them. ** Ellie wasn't exactly whispering. she was talking normally. Manny could have heard her with good enough hearing. * Condors don't eat acorns. ** The condor chick that tried to eat the acorn had only just hatched, it wouldn't know acorns weren't food. * In this movie, Diego is afraid of water; however, in the original, he is clearly seen chasing Nadia across a river. ** The river in the first movie is nowhere near deep enough to give Deigo problems. * The pirahna that eats Scrat's acorn is a different one than the one that Scrat forces the acorn out of. * Sid is wrong baby Smilodons can swim. References * Manny's blurry vision on the hot geysers field refers to Normandy beach landing scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan. * Manny mockingly refers Sid as a platypus as a reference to one of the three mascots of the 2000 Summer Olympics, Syd the Platypus. * Scrat's fight with the piranhas is a direct parody of the 2000 film, Wo hu cang long. * The song the vultures sing is a parody of "Food, Glorious Food" from the musical "Oliver!" and the movie of the same name. * In the first ice age, Sid says : "You know what i could go for? Global warming!" the second movie is, in fact, about global warming. Misc. * The film has some similarities to the biblical tale of Noah's Ark, the characters are soon to experience a flood in their habitat, Noah had to gather two animals of each species to save the diversity, in the movie, Manny thinks his species is in extinction and finds Ellie, leaving both of them apparently as the last couple of mammoths in the world. * Crash and Eddie bear a strong resemblance and similar demeanor to Pip and Pop, the twin otter brothers in Bear and the Big Blue House. * Animation of the movie only took a speedy eight months. * The movie was originally going to be released November 2005, But Hurricane Katrina breaking the levis in New Orleans delayed the release until March 26, 2006. * The film was originally rated G by the MPAA but later re-rated PG for some mild language and innuendo. Ice Age 2 was the first movie that can contain mild language. See also * Ice Age: The Meltdown/Quotes * Ice Age: The Meltdown/Gallery * Ice Age: The Meltdown/Home media References External links * Official Website * Ice Age: The Meltdown at the Internet Movie Database * Ice Age: The Meltdown at Rotten Tomatoes * Ice Age: The Meltdown at Metacritic Category:Movies